


by the white levin-light of the moon

by Isis



Category: The Shining Company - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, Ghosts, Missing Scene, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 16:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16432988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: It was on the third night of Cynan’s fever, as he tossed in the bed made for him in the women’s house at Dyn Eidin and muttered words that I could not make out, that his eyes flew open and he looked at me; but his eyes were wild and searching, and I did not think it was me that he saw.





	by the white levin-light of the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrs_timmings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_timmings/gifts).



It was on the third night of Cynan’s fever, as he tossed in the bed made for him in the women’s house at Dyn Eidin and muttered words that I could not make out, that his eyes flew open and he looked at me; but his eyes were wild and searching, and I did not think it was me that he saw. Often had it been thus, over the past nights, as he relived the siege, the last days of the Shining Company. And so I said soothingly, as I had on the past two nights of my vigil, “You are safe, Cynan; go you back to sleep.”

“No,” he said, in a clear, low voice. “I do not think Prosper was pleased to miss the battle, but as you led us to safety, he lives.”

“My lord? I am here,” I said.

“Prosper does not know,” said Cynan, and a chill pooled in my belly, for as it was me he spoke of, it could not be me he spoke to. “But he followed me as I followed you through the mist and the shield-wall, after the standard fell, after that giant of a Saxon knocked off my helmet and I saw you beckon.”

“That Saxon I killed with my dirk,” I said, with a hint of pride. It would not have been so easy, had he not been left off-balance; but he had struck at Cynan, and I would not let him live. “But who was it that beckoned?” 

Cynan had straightened himself in the saddle, and ridden on; he did not fall until we had ridden past the wayside gravestones and across the trampled, blood-soaked grass, not until the riderless horse plunged between us, and spooked Anwar to a gallop. How he had managed to stay upright, I could only wonder. I had thought it his courage, his sheer force of will. He said that he had followed someone through the mist, but I had seen no one, heard nothing but distant shouting. “Who do you speak with, my lord?”

“If I yet lived I would keep him as my shieldbearer,” Cynan told the air over my shoulder. “Prosper served me only for one day and one night, but it was the last day, the last moonrise, and he acquitted himself well.”

“You yet live,” I said uncertainly. He breathed and muttered to the air, and drank the herbal infusions the Queen’s women brewed for him, but it was living in only the most basic of senses. “I will serve you as I may.”

“I do not know what you speak of,” said Cynan peevishly. “How is it that we can converse if I am not dead? We are two ghosts, Gorthyn, you and I. We must watch over him together.”

I sat upright, a strange prickling down my backbone. Prince Gorthyn, whose hand I had held as he breathed his last? With the greatest care, I looked over my shoulder. I saw nothing but the charcoal brazier, burning the pungent herbs the Queen had placed there, the night-lamp in its niche in the stone wall, and the tiniest sliver of moonlight falling through a high window, turning everything to bright silver.

“My lord?” I did not expect an answer, and I did not receive one. I turned back to Cynan, who had closed his eyes again.

“If I live, I will watch over him, as he has watched over me. But I think it not likely that I will live.”

“You will live,” I whispered, and I hoped that both Cynan and Gorthyn heard me. “And I will be your shieldbearer, and follow where you go.”

I heard nothing more from him that night save his usual mumbled words, and in the morning the Queen’s women soothed his brow and gave him their brews to drink. The next night his fever broke, and when he looked at me he knew me. 

Afterwards, we never spoke of his illness, and I did not dare ask him if it truly had been Prince Gorthyn he’d spoken to, when he lay so close to death, nor if it truly had been Prince Gorthyn he had followed, to bring us away from the battle and ensure our survival after all our company had died. But I was his shieldbearer, and I followed him to Constantinople; and if Gorthyn watched over us, I hoped that it pleased him: that I had traveled so far because he had come hunting the white hart on my father’s lands, and he had not killed it.


End file.
